The present invention relates generally to food processing and, more particularly, to an improved method, system and apparatus for processing whole crabs, especially soft-shelled crabs.
Crabs are an extremely popular form of seafood. As with many seafoods, preserving their natural taste is a desireable end, which many food processors seek to obtain. Heretofore, a variety of approaches have been used for processing crabs; regardless of species and whether or not they are so-called hard- and/or soft-shelled. For background purposes, the terms "hard-shell" and "soft-shell" as applied to crabs do not refer to particular species, rather, these terms relate to specific portions of a crab's life-cycle. Blue crabs (i.e. Callenectes Sapidus) are called soft-shelled when they have recently molted and hard-shelled when the shell is fully formed.
For a number of reasons, processing crabs is a delicate procedure. For instance, crab meat quickly deteriorates following the crab's death. Thus, expediency in preserving crab meat is important for health and taste considerations among others. Moreover, if the crab meat is processed incorrectly, there is a distinct likelihood that the crab meat's fine texture and taste would be unfavorably compromised. Furthermore, crabs are fragile and care must be undertaken to avoid fracturing them or otherwise having the body parts separate not only during processing, but during packaging and shipping as well.
In processing crabs, it is common for such crabs to be transported from a crabber or wholesaler to a processor before being treated. Treatment generally involves cooking or boiling the crabs before freezing them. Some attempts to preserve crabs include the steps of pre-cooking a whole blue crab, for instance, followed by a quick freezing thereof; as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,336,274. In this patented approach, the whole crab is initially pre-cooked in a sugar water solution and then quick-frozen to temperatures lower than -l5.degree. F. by immersion in a Freon.TM. bath. Another approach that is described in the prior art is a combined pre-cooking step along with a cryogenic freezing step. Still another approach for preserving whole crabs is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,309,449, in which, for instance, whole blue crabs are chilled initially, followed by placing them in a brine solution which contains chemicals and is maintained at a temperature of from about -7.degree. F. to 10.degree. F. These approaches which utilize quick-freezing refrigerants, however, also use a cooking step preliminary to the freezing for purposes including better preserving of crab meat texture and flavor. Still another approach for preserving whole crabs includes a process whereby fresh crabs, as opposed to live crabs, are individually wrapped in plastic wrappers soon after their death and are then frozen in a conventional blast freezer over a 4 to 8 hour period. For background information, fresh crabs are generally understood to mean crabs which have been killed and have parts thereof, such as the apron, lungs and face removed. Thereafter, the frozen crabs are wrapped, packaged and shipped. This latter approach is somewhat labor intensive and, of course, involves considerable time for freezing the crabs to the desired temperature.
From the foregoing description, it is clear that there is an ongoing effort in the crab processing industry to quickly and safely process and preserve crabs, especially blue crabs. It is also an ongoing interest in this field to improve upon the manner by which fresh crabs are packaged and shipped, such that the number of crabs lost through spoilage in processing, transit or storage are diminished significantly.